The whole firefox controversy was overblown. Hardened firefox is still the way to go.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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It's mostly overblown. You can watch here or read here. The internet is overreacting again, but Mozilla has done fuck all to grasp why just yoinking understandable language and expecting people to understand legalese and draw lines to their Privacy Policy is making people upset or confused.
Imo, people jumping ship is justified, because a company that makes $37M just on investments should do better about being vocal and prescient champions of privacy. Even if their actual privacy policy is the same as it was a year ago, their failure to communicate with their supporters in a way they can understand should have consequences.
It may be overblown but I am seriously tired of the way Mozilla is being run. The CEO has a $7 million salary. Big red flags always appear each time they increase the salary also. May be a bit hyperbolic but that’s why I’m just using another fork after 20 years
Yup. I’ve been using Firefox for 16 years and I just switched to LibreWolf the other day.
Yeah, and while I don't have any technical qualms about the direction of Mozilla with regard to Firefox, I'm personally switching for peace of mind and because of the aforementioned inability to communicate well. I don't like working with or supporting people that can't just say what they mean. I mean, how hard would it have been to have a human-readable version for stupid people like me and have a legalese version for the lawyers?
Regardless, as people make decisions, they deserve to be informed. It would be stupid to decide to leave Firefox if all you knew was the uninformed outrage of the internet.
Switched to Zen and Mullvad
It seems the alternatives are worse but I'm definitely trying out one of the Firefox forks
I doubt that would be the case for Ladybird if the devs keep being how they are.
Can we stop acting like he raised a Nazi salute or something? Denying a PR that only changes minor stuff like pronouns by a not known contributor is well within the rights of a maintainer. Just because he did not communicate it well doesn't make him or the project transphob
It's way less egregious than the Brave co-founder making donations in support anti-gay marriage amendments, and even that has been massively overblown (the real reasons to avoid Brave are a) Chromium, b) shady crypto stuff and c) its financial incentives as a for-profit company with investor backing to compromise on its claimed ethical principles). I'm getting so sick of these purity tests on completely irrelevant and unrelated issues standing in the way of genuine alternatives to big tech. People are so eager to let perfect be the enemy of good.
For real. People can't stop sucking Metas dick, despite them facilitating actual genocides, eroding our society and using your socil life as a means of profit, but god forbid the maintainer of a project is not nice enough
Can you link to more info on this
It stems back to a PR from the SerenityOS project where someone changed a "he" to a "they" in the documentation and the PR was declined for "personal politics"
Here's an article about it: https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
It does leave out this response by Kling on Twitter:
as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM
Do they just try to remove DRM from media as it comes down, or can you not watch any DRM media at all on it?
They disable it by default, because it requires the execution of proprietary code, but you can reenable it.
i wasn't as plussed as everyone else over it, though i am concerned. i still donate to mozilla as, ultimately, i believe they're still good for those who champion an ethical, open, and not for profit internet.
i have switched to librefox, though, just because i like their developers and the fact that they've embraced mastodon and the fediverse. i also have firefox and nightly (though i use fennec on android because it comes through f droid)
Is Fennec trustable? They had that one vulnerability incident I can't name and that's when I first heard about them.
There is no benefit to using Firefox unless you really like uBlock Origin and will not consider another kind of adblocker.
Mozilla is just controlled opposition lead by the same greedy executives as Google anyway, using it won't make a difference. It's at best 3% market share won't stop Google from pushing their crap to everyone else either.
Problems of the modern web in general cannot be solved by just another browser engine. What it really needs is simplification. A way to make it do what it does now but faster and in a way that is easier to implement, but I don't see anyone doing that in the near future.
I mean yeah. I'm not a fan of the changes but there's no way in hell anything Chromium based will fare any better... do they even have uBlock still???
Probably turn off the telemetry, try a fork like LibreWolf or maybe the Arkenfox user.js if you'd rather stay close to upstream.
I've been using LW & Mull/IF before the outrage-TOU update and while they're great for me I wouldn't recommend them to everyone. I still keep FF as a backup and many ppl should continue to use FF for the time being as it was JUST A TOU update....for now.
I switched to https://librewolf.net/ on Desktop and https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox on Android.
Same, I’m done with Firefox / Mozilla…
Librewolf, Waterfox, Floorp seem like viable options.
Let me add FireDragon, a Floorp fork with librewolf and other changes.
I still recommend it with a little asterisk:
Disable a bunch of shit in it or download a privacy focused fork of it (like Librewolf)
That asterisk is a problem though, having to go through and make it secure is an issue. What if you miss a setting? What if you misunderstand a setting? None of it is particularly upfront and easy. It doesn't ask you when you first install it to set this stuff up, it encourages you to just get stuck in and start using it straight away.
It's not too complicated for a nerd whose hobby is computers or someone who has studied computers, but for the layperson it's too much.
That's why Librewolf is so good. It's secure by default, with all the settings toggled to privacy and you can ease that off if you wish, for convenience or whatever.
Firefox essentially can't seem to decide if they want to be FOSS or capitalist, that's an issue.
You're talking about security, but really, none of the privacy questions are about technical security of the product.
"What if you miss a setting?" Then they'll give you article recommendations or send your search query to the search engine you're targeting in the first place. They're really a long way from what you can call a security issue, or sharing personal data with random third parties or data brokers.
if they want to be FOSS or capitalist
I really don't see any basis for this take. It's not about picking one of two extremes, and the most extreme niches in those.
They create FOSS, and look for privacy respecting partnerships and investment so they can keep it going.
They added ToS because they're integrating services, like their synced/backed up browser data and other respectful integration.
That's all a long way from malice, or significant problematic behavior. And you still have more choice than on the other biggest alternatives.
I don't think it is the best we could have, I would like it a bit different too, but the way you make it out to be is way overblown if not wrong.
The browser project dedicated to open web standards steered by a compromised non-profit or the browser project dedicated to undermining the traditional web browsing experience steered by the largest advertising company on Earth ... Let me think ...
It's incredible unfunny to read people here on Lemmy (or in the Fediverse in general) talk about dropping Firefox for Chrome or a Chromium browser. it's like complaining that your country is going wrong by voting Trump.
Left them 4 years ago (after 20ish years), so...
Fuck Mozilla, is all I've got to say.
Nope. LibreWolf & Waterfox are top-tier, Zen and Mullvad Browsers aren't bad at all
I will say as nice as Zen seems (I agree that it's not bad), I don't really like the whole "vertical tabs" shtick. I mean, I can see why some people would like that, but personally I never got into it. It just looks weird to me and I like seeing more of my tab names (weirdly enough that's exactly what a lot of pro-vertical users claim is good about them lol).
Also, from a privacy standpoint, not a huge fan personally of the fact that unlike LibreWolf, Zen Browser doesn't have ResistFingerprinting enabled by default (not sure if it's even in there tbh).
i agree with wanting see more of tab title. for people who regularly keep 50+ tabs open, that is a pipe dream.
if tabs are so many that their iconized anyway, making the tab bar vertical and iconized isn't much difference.
and if the bar would expand on hover (hopefully in near future), like in Brave (not sure if it's a Chrome feature), then it can be wide enough to see plenty of title without reducing the webpage size most of the time.
You know, I've been trying Zen and although I still prefer horizontal to vertical, I can see I was actually somewhat wrong about what I said.
The sidebar is actually expandable (they don't make that clear) and if you do expand it beyond its default, you can actually see more of each tab's titles. It actually helps a lot if you have a shitload of tabs.
If you are like me however and typically try to have only a smaller number of tabs pinned (or consistently open), typically no more than like a third of your screen width at most, then there really is not much of a difference unless you're already used to vertical over horizontal tab bars.
I've been trying to keep less tabs open.
it's not easy while test-driving multiple search engines for every search lol
Oh I get it! It's certainly not easy. Haha. I struggle with it myself, but I've noticed that my mental health improves the more uncluttered my external life is, and my browser is a part of the latter.
"A tidy room is a tidy mind" and all that... It's not 100% accurate, but it's got a ring of truth to it, I've found, at least for me.
well Firefox may enshittify, it's still the best option imo, certainly better than chrome or anything chrome based. even better if you use a privacy focused fork like librewolf.
there are other options out there, you can look into qt browsers, those were the basis for webkit browsers. hopefully soon things like servo/verso become more useable.
The UX of Librewolf sucks ass though. Want to change this setting? Well you can't, too bad.
How the UX of librewolf is different from the UX of Firefox?
A lot of options are disabled for “privacy reasons”. There is no halfway approach. It’s all or nothing with their strict privacy settings.
For some, that’s perfect. For others, who want a more tailored privacy experience, it’s not a really great option.
Sucks they're not close to as secure as chromium based browsers. Where's my privacy and security first browser ☹️ Vandium is the only thing close to that. Can't wait for desktop version.
As @erotador@lemmy.blahaj.zone said, default Firefox is still more private than Chrome. Also, if you want security (and more privacy) on top of that, you should look into LibreWolf. I've been using it for a few years now and it's fantastic!
I don't know if it is due to some sort of baggage from using the Mozilla Sync service or what, but librewolf without Mozilla Sync is faster for use than Mozilla Firefox is for some reason.
I only swapped over a few days ago, but the speed up was big enough for it to be apparent to me.
Just not what I've read from security engineers or other sources like GrapheneOS devs. A lot of the flaws on mobile also apply to desktop. Just turns out engineering man power is a huge deal for secure browsers.
What you read is true, and also total nonsense.
There is not too much point in discussing privacy and security without a threat model.
So once you put your threat model into focus, you can discuss how to mitigate those threats and pick the right browser for you.